Winter Home Tips

This winter has already been an especially harsh one, especially in New York where were are bracing for yet another huge storm that’s coming our way today. As we’ve been dealing with the elements and my parent’s furnace went out this weekend when temps hit below zero, I thought it was a good time to do a home tips post with some ideas to make this season a little more bearable. I’d love to hear some of your tips in the comments too so make sure to share them!

Some of the most important things you can do to lessen the wear-and-tear from winter is work to prevent it! We are lucky enough to have a company that comes to plow & snow blow but we make sure to keep up with the shoveling in between their visits. We also make sure to put salt down when the driveway and our walkway are bare so that ice never gets the chance to build up. Instead of keeping a big bag of the ice-melt salt in our garage, we keep it ina giant glass canister{the largest one} right next to the front door. This not only makes it easily accessible but it looks really nice and I don’t mind having it out all the time. Here’s some different alternatives for storing your salt in a stylish way:

Try turing a jar into this easy-to-pour shaker, then all you need to bring it is one jar and you’re good to go! Go the same route we did and use giant glass canisters with a scoop inside… try WalMart, Hobby Lobby, Joann’s, etc and use coupons to get them for cheap! Ikea makes these little hanging buckets for kitchen utensils but I think it’d be great hung in an entry way. Fill a few little buckets each weekend and use one whenever you need to salt! Usethis tutorialto hang metal bins by your front door making it really easy to store the salt, then use it for storage in the other seasons!

Another big thing you can do as a preventative measure is to knowhow to prevent your pipes from freezing. This websitehas some great tips as well as a video for DIY-ers like me with lots of different ways to help prevent a big catastrophe! As I mentioned before, my parents had their furnace go on one of the coldest days of the year so have a local heating company come by and perform a check-up. There’s also a few articles online {likethis one from DIY Network} on how you can do a furnace tune-up yourself!

One of the biggest problems we can have in the winter is how much the heating bill costs at the end of each month so here’s some ideas for conserving as much energy as possible:

This is a great DIY tutorial for an under-the-door draft stopper which is great for keeping hot air in and cold air out {make them for windows too!}. Turning your ceiling fan’s switch to reverse will push the warm up that’s around your ceiling down and circulate it around the room. We had a new hot water tank installed this fall and they set it at 140 degrees, by turning it down to 120 degrees you can greatly decrease your energy bill! If you don’t have pets who are staying in your home while you’re at work, the easiest way to save on energy is to turn the heat down while you’re not home! Weather striping is a fairly inexpensive and easy way to keep out cold drafts, Lowes haseasy to follow instructionson their website!

We recently got an Ultrasonic Humidifier for our bedroom that we run at night because the air is insanely dry and it works wonders! It’s really inexpensive and comes in five different colors and I love how sleek-looking it is…we got ours at Target!

What are some of your tips you use to get by in the winters? Please share in the comments below!

Thanks! I was in your same boat about the humidifier. I had gotten a gift card from the Bills for Target and thought it was a good excuse to try it out, we love ours! I keep it on our console table in our room at night then store it right under our bathroom sink in the morning!